Labor Unions in the Cotton Mills

Teaser

Introduce students to the importance of oral history while simultaneously teaching them about 20th-century labor unions.

lesson_image
Website
Labor Unions in the Cotton Mills
Description

Students listen to excerpts of oral histories from former cotton mill workers, who discuss their reasons for joining (or not joining) the labor union. Students discuss these sources, and take a stand for or against joining the labor union in early 20th century cotton mills.

Article Body

In this lesson, students use oral histories to consider workers’ motivations (and reluctances) about joining labor unions in the cotton mills of North and South Carolina in the early 20th century. The website provides both audio recordings and transcripts of the oral history excerpts, allowing students multiple access points to the content.

The lesson introduces oral history as primary source and can be used to help structure class activities where students will gather oral histories. The website provides additional ideas for using these primary sources in an online guide to oral histories in the classroom. The brief excerpts (and accompanying background information) included here present challenges faced by cotton mill laborers, as well as concerns over the possible consequences of unionization. Peoples’ reasons both for and against union involvement are included. In this way the lesson illustrates contrasting perceptions on unionization and the necessity to look for varied perspectives when conducting historical research.

Students, in groups, write a speech about the merits of joining (or not joining) the union. We suggest that teachers be explicit that this speech be composed as if addressing this early 20th-century audience, and ensure that students have sufficient background knowledge about the specific historical circumstances to construct a realistic speech. Asking students to consider how similar or different the stated concerns are to those of modern-day workers confronted with a similar choice may help with illuminating historical context, as will additional background information. Teachers could also add a “context checker” to group roles to ensure this is taken into account.

The short, contrasting oral history excerpts included make this lesson a good way to introduce oral history and show its usefulness to understanding the past as well as to learning more about the labor movement.

Topic
Labor Unions
Time Estimate
3-4 Class Sessions
flexibility_scale
4
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes
In addition to background information on the subjects of the oral histories included on the right-hand column of the lesson page, the site also includes additional helpful resources (under “related topics”) on cotton mills and labor unions.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes
Written transcripts are provided for the oral histories, and students are asked to write speeches defending or opposing unionization in the cotton mills.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes
Students will need to closely analyze each oral history to identify a worker’s reasons for or against joining the union.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes
While discussion questions are included for each document, teachers may want to provide additional support for struggling readers and English Language Learners.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

No
Although the lesson does not provide specific criteria, teachers can use the persuasive speech at the end of the lesson (Activity 4) as an assessment. Constructing criteria that include attention to historical context is likely necessary.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes

The Short-Handled Hoe

Teaser

History is imbedded in the smallest objects. In this lesson, students examine how a simple farming tool connects to the work done by United Farm Workers.

lesson_image
Website
Object of History
Description

Students view a variety of documents and artifacts related to the short-handled hoe, migrant labor, and the United Farm Workers. They then draw on these sources to develop an online museum exhibit for the hoe.

Article Body

This lesson uses a simple farming tool, the short-handled hoe, to introduce students to migrant labor in California and the farm worker labor movement.

After a brief introduction to the hoe and the bracero program that brought workers to California from Mexico, students explore a variety of artifacts to understand the context of the hoe’s use, as well as the United Farm Workers’ role in the 20th-century labor and civil rights movement. Students then draw from these varied sources to create an online museum exhibit centered on the hoe.

One of the great strengths of this lesson is that it starts with what seems a simple artifact, the short-handled hoe, but leads students towards more complex thinking, including grappling with the artifact’s larger symbolic and political meanings and its historical significance. The lesson also provides an excellent opportunity for teaching about historical context because placing the short-handled hoe in the context of the other artifacts and documents clarifies the meaning of this particular artifact (labeled a “barbaric instrument” by one doctor).

While the lesson provides only minimal structure, teachers will appreciate the wealth of companion resources, including historians’ commentary, images of other farming tools, and primary sources related to California farm labor, and the work of César Chavez and the United Farm Workers.

Topic
20th Century Labor
Time Estimate
1-2 Class Sessions
flexibility_scale
2
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes
In addition to a brief introduction, teachers can find additional resources listed here.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes
While many of the primary sources are artifacts, others are written documents. In addition, in the final activity, students must give a written justification for items included in their exhibit.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes
Students create a thesis statement for their exhibit and have to explain why they chose each of the items in their exhibit. Ideally, this explanation should connect to the thesis.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

No
Teachers may want to provide additional support for struggling readers and English Language Learners in understanding some of the historical documents.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

No
While no specific assessment is provided, teachers may use the culminating activity as an assessment. Criteria for assessment would need to be established.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes

World War II Memorial

Video Overview

What do the elements of the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, symbolize? Is the design effective? Who was the memorial built for? Christopher Hamner and Michael O'Malley try to answer these questions by contrasting the memorial with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Video Clip Name
warmemorial2.mov
Video Clip Title
World War II Memorial
Transcript Text

Christopher Hamner: You can’t really understand the World War II Monument, where it is and why it looks the way it looks, without understanding the Vietnam Memorial and the story of getting it built. The design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was open to everybody. It eventually got more than 1,400 submissions. They were handled anonymously so that the judging panels saw only the design and a numbered code and they went on 1,400 down to 300 down to 30 down to the winner who was very surprising when it was revealed. It was a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale named Maya Lin.

Michael O’Malley: Problematic is so many ways.

Christopher Hamner:: Youth, ethnicity, gender. And it was the design that’s very close to what we now see on the Mall. One of the reasons that I suspect the World War II Monument looks the way that it looks, which is much more traditional, heroic, sort of celebratory. It seems to privilege sort of consensus and unity above everything else. [It] has to do with the desire to avoid that kind of controversy. One of the things that we pointed out was the fact that the ring of stones that sort of marks the outer boundary that are adorned with wreaths are dedicated to the states.

Michael O’Malley: Which makes no sense. The state-iness was not part of the World War II experience.

Christopher Hamner: Of all the ways you could possibly cut up World War II—

Michael O’Malley: It’s not like all the guys from Delaware were in one unit. They got drafted, they went down to some camp in the South and then they went back. I mean their was no state-iness attached to it.

Christopher Hamner: It’s a national effort to the extent that people identify with some smaller segment, it’s usually by branch or then by division. There are other ways that you could group it, but the one that makes the least sense is the states. It’s incredibly traditional, it’s white, there are wreaths, there’s a gold star at one end for every 500 combat deaths.

Michael O’Malley: So they want to have some element of what the Vietnam War Memorial does so well, which is individualizing. Really made graphic the extent of the loss. They want to have some element of that—

Christopher Hamner: But they don’t particularize it quite as effectively and that some of the teachers that we toured with said that that element of it had sort of fallen flat, that it did not—

Michael O’Malley: You actually came away thinking less people died in World War II than in Vietnam.

Christopher Hamner: I found as I walked around I spent probably half my time trying to figure out what the organizational strategy was. They were not in alphabetical order, they were not in the order the states joined the Union, they’re not grouped together. I mean I couldn’t tell. It didn’t look to me like it was sort of by population or the sort of number of soldiers from that state who perished over the course of the war and I started to suspect that it was just random.

Michael O’Malley: I mean the Vietnam Memorial takes a few elements and loads them with meaning. This thing takes a lot of elements and bleeds the meaning out of them.

Christopher Hamner: We also talked about the Korean War Memorial, which is a sort of interesting combination, right? That it’s particularized and personalized and that it’s slightly larger-than-life-size figures of soldiers that are in ponchos. They’re spread out and kind of making their way across a field but they’re not heroic in the way that soldiers a century ago would have been portrayed. You can feel the weight of the gear that they carry.

Michael O’Malley: And that wants to put you in the midst of it, I mean you walk through them. You’re right in the middle of that, so, where as in the World War II Memorial you’re in the middle of kind of nothing, you’re in the middle of some kind of empty abstraction.

Christopher Hamner: It has become more participatory at least during the daytime than it had been before because there are so many World War II veterans who are designated, who are kind of milling around the areas and who will engage with visitors and pose for photographs and talk about their experience so there is a sort of participatory dimension to it. But as Mike pointed out, these guys won’t be around forever, that cannot last.

Michael O’Malley: That’s an element of this thing that we got to in the discussion. There were some great questions, like who was this thing for? And there was really a sense that this was for veterans. Like this is here to make veterans feel good. It’s not about the nation remembering something. It’s a gift to veterans. I have nothing against giving gifts to veterans, but is that the purpose of a memorial? That’s a worthwhile question. And when the veterans are gone, what do you have? You have a gift for a person who is no longer around. It’s an odd construction of memorialization.

IWitness

Image
What is it?

IWitness is a free resource developed by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute to help students develop a deeper understanding of 20th-century history alongside digital and media literacies. It houses approximately 1,000 Holocaust survivor and witness testimonies and allows students to construct multimedia projects using the testimonies. Users need only an Internet connection; all of the tools—including an online video editor—are self-contained on the server and are compatible with both Macs and PCs.

Getting Started

In order to start using IWitness, click here and select “register.” Once registered, you will be able to create classes and generate access codes students can use to register.

Teachers are using IWitness as a way to integrate 21st-century literacies into a range of subjects.

Even prior to registering, the IWitness home page features a rotating group of curated clips. These short clips run less than five minutes and draw learners into compelling stories. Linked from the home page, the Browse All Topics page provides more clips from a breadth of topics to anyone visiting the site. Registered users are able to search among more than 1,000 full-length testimonies, then save clips from the testimonies for use in projects. Testimonies have been indexed to the minute with keywords. If, for example, students search for “music,” they will get a list of clips where the interviewee discusses music, and they can go right to the exact minute in which music is discussed in a testimony. Users also can narrow search results in various ways.

Once signed in, you should go to your “Dashboard” to get started exploring IWitness. From here you will notice videos located on the left side under “Connections.” The Connections videos will help you address important topics with your students: ethical editing of video clips, effective searching, and defining terms like “archive” and “testimony.” There is an Educators page designed to orient teachers to the site and highlight available resources. There is also a resource tab on the top of the screen with links to reliable information. For students and teachers alike, IWitness offers a Tool Kit, which can fly out from the right side of the screen. The Tool Kit provides users with quick access to their assigned activities, as well as to an encyclopedia, glossary, and note-taking tool.

IWitness has numerous activities you can assign to your students. More than 200 activities are available in several languages and cover an array of subjects from the Holocaust and genocide to cinema and media & digital literacy. Different types of activities present information in diverse formats and can be filtered for different age or subject levels. “Information Quest”, for example, focuses on a single survivor or witness of the Holocaust. Students listen carefully for information in testimony clips and then reflect on their learning by using, among other things, a world cloud tool. As an educator, you are also able to build your own activities for your students in IWitness with the “Activity Builder”. The additional resources offered on the “Resources” page provide bibliographies, glossaries, and timelines that may be useful when assigning activities for students to build or complete.

Examples
IWitness allows students to learn about . . . the 20th century while creating meaningful projects and making connections with their own lives.

Teachers are using IWitness as a way to integrate 21st-century literacies into a range of subjects, including social studies, language arts, media studies, psychology, and more. One history teacher built an IWitness activity so his students could compare and contrast the Hollywood portrayal of the Sobibor Uprising in film with how survivors of the event remember and describe it. Through his IWitness activity “Escape From Sobibor: Hollywood and Memory,” his students were able to use critical thinking as they watched testimony and compared it to the film, then select clips of that testimony to construct a more historical depiction of daily life in the concentration camp.

You can also use IWitness to help teach online etiquette and respectful dialogue skills. Within IWitness, students finish their activities by viewing and commenting on their classmates’ projects. This is a great way to spark conversation that can continue in IWitness through social-media-style commenting tools. Teachers are able to mediate conversations and communicate with students within the application. IWitness also provides reminders to students about good digital citizenship when communicating with their peers within the site. IWitness allows students to learn about important events in the 20th century while creating meaningful projects and making connections with their own lives.

For more information

Want to learn more about IWitness? See Teachinghistory.org's Website Review for more information.

Looking for more resources on the Holocaust? Teachinghistory.org has gathered website reviews, lesson plans, teaching strategies, and more on the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust spotlight page.

Organizing History Through Images

Teaser

In this lesson, students will organize photographs both chronologically and conceptually in order to construct a narrative of the Holocaust.

lesson_image
Website
U.S. Holocaust Museum: Teaching about the Holocaust
Description

Students organize photographs from the U.S. Holocaust Museum both chronologically and conceptually in order to construct a narrative of the Holocaust.

Article Body

In this lesson, students organize photographs in order to tell the story of the Holocaust and construct an evidentiary narrative that makes sense to them. The lesson does not include any “correct” ordering or organization of the photographs and instead encourages students to experiment with organizing them both chronologically and thematically.

This lesson also guides students through the process of revising conclusions based on the discovery of additional historical evidence. Students are given a definition of the Holocaust and asked to consider or revise the definition with each new photograph in order to illustrate how historical narratives change depending on the available evidence.

Reading and analyzing primary texts can often be a daunting task for students who struggle with basic literacy skills. However, because this lesson presents historical data in the form of photographs, it is an excellent way to provide all students with access to the historical process, and to support historical thinking with struggling readers or English language learners.

For more advanced or older students, the supplementary activity asks students to read and incorporate brief testimonies of survivors into their definition of the Holocaust.

Topic
The Holocaust
Time Estimate
2 Class Sessions
flexibility_scale
4
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes
The lesson requires students to “read” photographs and write a detailed “definition” of the Holocaust.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes
Captions and dates for each photograph are included in the lesson. There are additional background materials available.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes
Students construct an interpretation of the Holocaust using photographs.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

Yes
Students closely “read” photographs and accompanying source information.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes
Some of the photographs are disturbing (as is to be expected given the lesson’s topic).

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes
A student worksheet guides students through the process of analyzing each photograph and helps them focus on relevant details.

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

Yes
Some general strategies for assessment are provided. Teachers will want to determine and communicate their criteria for assessment.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes

Subscribe to Great Depression & WWII, 1929-1945